Cameroon president returns home after months-long stay abroad
Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has returned to the country after a months-long stay abroad, according to NTV Kenya. The development ends an extended absence that had drawn renewed public attention to the veteran leader’s travel patterns and the questions such absences routinely raise about his age and health.
A decades-long tenure
Biya, who has been in power since 1982, is one of the longest-serving heads of state in the world. His tenure, now stretching past four decades, has made any prolonged absence from Cameroon’s capital a matter of national attention. Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a bilingual nation that straddles West and Central Africa, with Yaoundé serving as its political capital and Douala as its economic hub.
Long stays outside the country have been a recurring feature of Biya’s presidency over the years, with media reports frequently placing him in Switzerland for extended periods. Such absences have periodically fuelled speculation about his health and about who exercises day-to-day authority in his absence. Biya, born in 1933, remains one of the oldest sitting leaders on the African continent.
A country facing overlapping challenges
Cameroon faces a range of ongoing challenges, including a separatist conflict in its English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions that escalated in 2017, and persistent insecurity in the Far North linked to Boko Haram. The country’s political opposition has long called for greater transparency around the president’s whereabouts during extended foreign stays, arguing that citizens deserve to know who is leading the nation at all times.
NTV Kenya did not provide further details about the duration of Biya’s absence or the circumstances of his return in its brief report.
Sources
This report was written from coverage published by the following news organisations. Follow the links for the original reporting.
